Detection of Broken Word-Lines in Memory Arrays

ABSTRACT

Techniques and corresponding circuitry are presented for the detection of broken wordlines in a memory array. One example considers an “inter-word-line” comparison where the program loop counts of different word-lines are compared in order to determine whether a word-line may be defective. For example, the number of programming pulses needed for the cells along a word-line WLn is compared to the number needed for a preceding word-line, such as WLn or WL(n−1), to see whether it exceeds this earlier value by a threshold value. If the word-line requires an excessive number of pulses, relative the earlier word-line, to complete programming, it is treated as defective.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates generally to semiconductor memory circuits such as electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) and flash EEPROM, and specifically to the detection of defective word-lines in such memory circuits.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Solid-state memory capable of nonvolatile storage of charge, particularly in the form of EEPROM and flash EEPROM packaged as a small form factor card, has recently become the storage of choice in a variety of mobile and handheld devices, notably information appliances and consumer electronics products. Unlike RAM (random access memory) that is also solid-state memory, flash memory is non-volatile and retains its stored data even after power is turned off. In spite of the higher cost, flash memory is increasingly being used in mass storage applications. Conventional mass storage, based on rotating magnetic medium such as hard drives and floppy disks, is unsuitable for the mobile and handheld environment. This is because disk drives tend to be bulky, are prone to mechanical failure and have high latency and high power requirements. These undesirable attributes make disk-based storage impractical in most mobile and portable applications. On the other hand, flash memory, both embedded and in the form of a removable card, are ideally suited in the mobile and handheld environment because of its small size, low power consumption, high speed and high reliability features.

EEPROM and electrically programmable read-only memory (EPROM) are non-volatile memory that can be erased and have new data written or “programmed” into their memory cells. Both utilize a floating (unconnected) conductive gate, in a field effect transistor structure, positioned over a channel region in a semiconductor substrate, between source and drain regions. A control gate is then provided over the floating gate. The threshold voltage characteristic of the transistor is controlled by the amount of charge that is retained on the floating gate. That is, for a given level of charge on the floating gate, there is a corresponding voltage (threshold) that must be applied to the control gate before the transistor is turned “on” to permit conduction between its source and drain regions.

The floating gate can hold a range of charges and therefore can be programmed to any threshold voltage level within a threshold voltage window. The size of the threshold voltage window is delimited by the minimum and maximum threshold levels of the device, which in turn correspond to the range of the charges that can be programmed onto the floating gate. The threshold window generally depends on the memory device's characteristics, operating conditions and history. Each distinct, resolvable threshold voltage level range within the window may, in principle, be used to designate a definite memory state of the cell. When the threshold voltage is partitioned into two distinct regions, each memory cell will be able to store one bit of data. Similarly, when the threshold voltage window is partitioned into more than two distinct regions, each memory cell will be able to store more than one bit of data.

In the usual two-state EEPROM cell, at least one current breakpoint level is established so as to partition the conduction window into two regions. When a cell is read by applying predetermined, fixed voltages, its source/drain current is resolved into a memory state by comparing with the breakpoint level (or reference current IREF). If the current read is higher than that of the breakpoint level, the cell is determined to be in one logical state (e.g., a “zero” state). On the other hand, if the current is less than that of the breakpoint level, the cell is determined to be in the other logical state (e.g., a “one” state). Thus, such a two-state cell stores one bit of digital information. A reference current source, which may be externally programmable, is often provided as part of a memory system to generate the breakpoint level current.

In order to increase memory capacity, flash EEPROM devices are being fabricated with higher and higher density as the state of the semiconductor technology advances. Another method for increasing storage capacity is to have each memory cell store more than two states.

For a multi-state or multi-level EEPROM memory cell, the conduction window is partitioned into more than two regions by more than one breakpoint such that each cell is capable of storing more than one bit of data. The information that a given EEPROM array can store is thus increased with the number of states that each cell can store. EEPROM or flash EEPROM with multi-state or multi-level memory cells have been described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,172,338.

The transistor serving as a memory cell is typically programmed to a “programmed” state by one of two mechanisms. In “hot electron injection,” a high voltage applied to the drain accelerates electrons across the substrate channel region. At the same time a high voltage applied to the control gate pulls the hot electrons through a thin gate dielectric onto the floating gate. In “tunneling injection,” a high voltage is applied to the control gate relative to the substrate. In this way, electrons are pulled from the substrate to the intervening floating gate.

The memory device may be erased by a number of mechanisms. For EPROM, the memory is bulk erasable by removing the charge from the floating gate by ultraviolet radiation. For EEPROM, a memory cell is electrically erasable, by applying a high voltage to the substrate relative to the control gate so as to induce electrons in the floating gate to tunnel through a thin oxide to the substrate channel region (i.e., Fowler-Nordheim tunneling.) Typically, the EEPROM is erasable byte by byte. For flash EEPROM, the memory is electrically erasable either all at once or one or more blocks at a time, where a block may consist of 512 bytes or more of memory.

The memory devices typically comprise one or more memory chips that may be mounted on a card. Each memory chip comprises an array of memory cells supported by peripheral circuits such as decoders and erase, write and read circuits. The more sophisticated memory devices operate with an external memory controller that performs intelligent and higher level memory operations and interfacing.

There are many commercially successful non-volatile solid-state memory devices being used today. These memory devices may be flash EEPROM or may employ other types of nonvolatile memory cells. Examples of flash memory and systems and methods of manufacturing them are given in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,070,032, 5,095,344, 5,315,541, 5,343,063, and 5,661,053, 5,313,421 and 6,222,762. In particular, flash memory devices with NAND string structures are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,570,315, 5,903,495, 6,046,935. Also nonvolatile memory devices are also manufactured from memory cells with a dielectric layer for storing charge. Instead of the conductive floating gate elements described earlier, a dielectric layer is used. Such memory devices utilizing dielectric storage element have been described by Eitan et al., “NROM: A Novel Localized Trapping, 2-Bit Nonvolatile Memory Cell,” IEEE Electron Device Letters, vol. 21, no. 11, November 2000, pp. 543-545. An ONO dielectric layer extends across the channel between source and drain diffusions. The charge for one data bit is localized in the dielectric layer adjacent to the drain, and the charge for the other data bit is localized in the dielectric layer adjacent to the source. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,768,192 and 6,011,725 disclose a nonvolatile memory cell having a trapping dielectric sandwiched between two silicon dioxide layers. Multi-state data storage is implemented by separately reading the binary states of the spatially separated charge storage regions within the dielectric.

Defects often occur in such memory systems, both as part of the manufacturing process as well over the operating life of the device. One of the sources of such defects are the word-lines of such memory arrays, due both to word-line leakage (to another work-line or to the substrate) and to broken word-lines. These word-line related problems typically become more and more acute as device sizes scale down. Some word-line to word-line leakage does not manifest itself when the device is fresh, but only results in a failure after the stress of a number of program-erase cycles. This leakage will cause the faulty word-line to fail to program and corresponding data will be corrupted. A broken word-line will have a high resistive connection, as a result of which the cells on far end of the break will see a voltage drop during program and verify operations. As a result, the threshold voltage distribution for the broken word-line will show un-distinguishable states. Consequently, both of these sorts of defects can be detrimental to memory operation if not detected.

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

According to a first set of aspects, for a non-volatile memory circuit having an array including a plurality of erase blocks each including a plurality of memory cells formed along word-lines, a method of operation is presented that includes a process of determining whether a word-line is defective. The process includes performing first write operation on a first plurality of memory cells along a first word-line from a first erase block, where the first write operation includes a series of alternating programming pulses and verify operations, the first plurality of memory cells along the first word-line individually locking out from further programming pulses as verified. The number of programming pulses in the first write operation is determined for the memory cells of the first plurality of memory cells along the first word-line to verify as written. A second write operation is subsequently performed on a first plurality of memory cells along a second word-line from the first erase block, the second write operation including a series of alternating programming pulses and verify operations, the first plurality of memory cells along the second word-line individually locking out from further programming pulses as verified The number of programming pulses in the second write operation is determined for the memory cells of the first plurality of memory cells along the second word-line to verify as written. It is determined whether the number of programming pulses in the second write operation relative to the number of programming pulses in the first write operation exceeds a threshold value, and in response to the number of programming pulses in the second write operation relative to the number of programming pulses in the first write operation exceeding the threshold, the second word-line is defective is determined as defective.

Various aspects, advantages, features and embodiments of the present invention are included in the following description of exemplary examples thereof, whose description should be taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. All patents, patent applications, articles, other publications, documents and things referenced herein are hereby incorporated herein by this reference in their entirety for all purposes. To the extent of any inconsistency or conflict in the definition or use of terms between any of the incorporated publications, documents or things and the present application, those of the present application shall prevail.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates schematically the functional blocks of a non-volatile memory chip in which the present invention may be implemented.

FIG. 2 illustrates schematically a non-volatile memory cell.

FIG. 3 illustrates the relation between the source-drain current I_(D) and the control gate voltage V_(CG), for four different charges Q1-Q4 that the floating gate may be selectively storing at any one time.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example of an NOR array of memory cells.

FIG. 5A illustrates schematically a string of memory cells organized into an NAND string.

FIG. 5B illustrates an example of an NAND array 200 of memory cells, constituted from NAND strings 50 such as that shown in FIG. 5A.

FIG. 6 illustrates the Read/Write Circuits 270A and 270B, shown in FIG. 1, containing a bank of p sense modules across an array of memory cells.

FIG. 7 illustrates schematically a preferred organization of the sense modules shown in FIG. 6.

FIG. 8 illustrates in more detail the read/write stacks shown in FIG. 7.

FIGS. 9(0)-9(2) illustrate an example of programming a population of 4-state memory cells.

FIGS. 10(0)-10(2) illustrate an example of programming a population of 8-state memory cells.

FIG. 11 illustrates a conventional technique for programming a 4-state memory cell to a target memory state.

FIG. 12 shows a circuitry detail on how voltages are supplied to word-lines.

FIG. 13 is a block diagram of an exemplary charge pump circuit.

FIG. 14 adds leakage detection circuitry to FIG. 13.

FIG. 15 illustrates the phases of the exemplary leakage detection operation.

FIG. 16 shows the current path in a calibration process for the word-line leakage process.

FIG. 17 illustrates the phases of the calibration operation.

FIG. 18 shows the distribution of memory cell threshold voltage values to illustrate symptoms of a broken word-line.

FIG. 19 illustrates the variation in the number of programming pulse-verify iterations over different word-lines.

FIG. 20 is a timing diagram for a broken word-line detection routine.

FIGS. 21A and 21B illustrate differing placements of word-line drivers.

FIGS. 22 and 23A are flows for a scan of failed bits in a program operation.

FIG. 23B is a flow for a scan of failed bits in a program operation that also includes broken word-line detection.

FIG. 24 is a flowchart illustrating some aspects of the program loop count check for a basic embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Memory System

FIG. 1 to FIG. 11 illustrate example memory systems in which the various aspects of the present invention may be implemented.

FIG. 1 illustrates schematically the functional blocks of a non-volatile memory chip in which the present invention may be implemented. The memory chip 100 includes a two-dimensional array of memory cells 200, control circuitry 210, and peripheral circuits such as decoders, read/write circuits and multiplexers.

The memory array 200 is addressable by word lines via row decoders 230 (split into 230A, 230B) and by bit lines via column decoders 260 (split into 260A, 260B) (see also FIGS. 4 and 5.) The read/write circuits 270 (split into 270A, 270B) allow a page of memory cells to be read or programmed in parallel. A data I/O bus 231 is coupled to the read/write circuits 270.

In a preferred embodiment, a page is constituted from a contiguous row of memory cells sharing the same word line. In another embodiment, where a row of memory cells are partitioned into multiple pages, block multiplexers 250 (split into 250A and 250B) are provided to multiplex the read/write circuits 270 to the individual pages. For example, two pages, respectively formed by odd and even columns of memory cells are multiplexed to the read/write circuits.

FIG. 1 illustrates a preferred arrangement in which access to the memory array 200 by the various peripheral circuits is implemented in a symmetric fashion, on opposite sides of the array so that the densities of access lines and circuitry on each side are reduced in half. Thus, the row decoder is split into row decoders 230A and 230B and the column decoder into column decoders 260A and 260B. In the embodiment where a row of memory cells are partitioned into multiple pages, the page multiplexer 250 is split into page multiplexers 250A and 250B. Similarly, the read/write circuits 270 are split into read/write circuits 270A connecting to bit lines from the bottom and read/write circuits 270B connecting to bit lines from the top of the array 200. In this way, the density of the read/write modules, and therefore that of the sense modules 380, is essentially reduced by one half.

The control circuitry 110 is an on-chip controller that cooperates with the read/write circuits 270 to perform memory operations on the memory array 200. The control circuitry 110 typically includes a state machine 112 and other circuits such as an on-chip address decoder and a power control module (not shown explicitly). The state machine 112 provides chip level control of memory operations. The control circuitry is in communication with a host via an external memory controller.

The memory array 200 is typically organized as a two-dimensional array of memory cells arranged in rows and columns and addressable by word lines and bit lines. The array can be formed according to an NOR type or an NAND type architecture.

FIG. 2 illustrates schematically a non-volatile memory cell. The memory cell 10 can be implemented by a field-effect transistor having a charge storage unit 20, such as a floating gate or a dielectric layer. The memory cell 10 also includes a source 14, a drain 16, and a control gate 30.

There are many commercially successful non-volatile solid-state memory devices being used today. These memory devices may employ different types of memory cells, each type having one or more charge storage element.

Typical non-volatile memory cells include EEPROM and flash EEPROM. Examples of EEPROM cells and methods of manufacturing them are given in U.S. Pat. No. 5,595,924. Examples of flash EEPROM cells, their uses in memory systems and methods of manufacturing them are given in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,070,032, 5,095,344, 5,315,541, 5,343,063, 5,661,053, 5,313,421 and 6,222,762. In particular, examples of memory devices with NAND cell structures are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,570,315, 5,903,495, 6,046,935. Also, examples of memory devices utilizing dielectric storage element have been described by Eitan et al., “NROM: A Novel Localized Trapping, 2-Bit Nonvolatile Memory Cell,” IEEE Electron Device Letters, vol. 21, no. 11, November 2000, pp. 543-545, and in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,768,192 and 6,011,725.

In practice, the memory state of a cell is usually read by sensing the conduction current across the source and drain electrodes of the cell when a reference voltage is applied to the control gate. Thus, for each given charge on the floating gate of a cell, a corresponding conduction current with respect to a fixed reference control gate voltage may be detected. Similarly, the range of charge programmable onto the floating gate defines a corresponding threshold voltage window or a corresponding conduction current window.

Alternatively, instead of detecting the conduction current among a partitioned current window, it is possible to set the threshold voltage for a given memory state under test at the control gate and detect if the conduction current is lower or higher than a threshold current. In one implementation the detection of the conduction current relative to a threshold current is accomplished by examining the rate the conduction current is discharging through the capacitance of the bit line.

FIG. 3 illustrates the relation between the source-drain current I_(D) and the control gate voltage V_(CG) for four different charges Q1-Q4 that the floating gate may be selectively storing at any one time. The four solid I_(D) versus V_(CG) curves represent four possible charge levels that can be programmed on a floating gate of a memory cell, respectively corresponding to four possible memory states. As an example, the threshold voltage window of a population of cells may range from 0.5V to 3.5V. Seven possible memory states “0”, “1”, “2”, “3”, “4”, “5”, “6”, respectively representing one erased and six programmed states may be demarcated by partitioning the threshold window into five regions in interval of 0.5V each. For example, if a reference current, IREF of 2 μA is used as shown, then the cell programmed with Q1 may be considered to be in a memory state “1” since its curve intersects with T_(REF) in the region of the threshold window demarcated by VCG=0.5V and 1.0V. Similarly, Q4 is in a memory state “5”.

As can be seen from the description above, the more states a memory cell is made to store, the more finely divided is its threshold window. For example, a memory device may have memory cells having a threshold window that ranges from −1.5V to 5V. This provides a maximum width of 6.5V. If the memory cell is to store 16 states, each state may occupy from 200 mV to 300 mV in the threshold window. This will require higher precision in programming and reading operations in order to be able to achieve the required resolution.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example of an NOR array of memory cells. In the memory array 200, each row of memory cells are connected by their sources 14 and drains 16 in a daisy-chain manner. This design is sometimes referred to as a virtual ground design. The cells 10 in a row have their control gates 30 connected to a word line, such as word line 42. The cells in a column have their sources and drains respectively connected to selected bit lines, such as bit lines 34 and 36.

FIG. 5A illustrates schematically a string of memory cells organized into an NAND string. An NAND string 50 comprises of a series of memory transistors M1, M2, . . . Mn (e.g., 4, 8, 16 or higher) daisy-chained by their sources and drains. A pair of select transistors S1, S2 controls the memory transistors chain's connection to the external via the NAND string's source terminal 54 and drain terminal 56 respectively. In a memory array, when the source select transistor S1 is turned on, the source terminal is coupled to a source line (see FIG. 5B). Similarly, when the drain select transistor S2 is turned on, the drain terminal of the NAND string is coupled to a bit line of the memory array. Each memory transistor 10 in the chain acts as a memory cell. It has a charge storage element 20 to store a given amount of charge so as to represent an intended memory state. A control gate 30 of each memory transistor allows control over read and write operations. As will be seen in FIG. 5B, the control gates 30 of corresponding memory transistors of a row of NAND string are all connected to the same word line. Similarly, a control gate 32 of each of the select transistors S1, S2 provides control access to the NAND string via its source terminal 54 and drain terminal 56 respectively. Likewise, the control gates 32 of corresponding select transistors of a row of NAND string are all connected to the same select line.

When an addressed memory transistor 10 within an NAND string is read or is verified during programming, its control gate 30 is supplied with an appropriate voltage. At the same time, the rest of the non-addressed memory transistors in the NAND string 50 are fully turned on by application of sufficient voltage on their control gates. In this way, a conductive path is effective created from the source of the individual memory transistor to the source terminal 54 of the NAND string and likewise for the drain of the individual memory transistor to the drain terminal 56 of the cell. Memory devices with such NAND string structures are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,570,315, 5,903,495, 6,046,935.

FIG. 5B illustrates an example of an NAND array 200 of memory cells, constituted from NAND strings 50 such as that shown in FIG. 5A. Along each column of NAND strings, a bit line such as bit line 36 is coupled to the drain terminal 56 of each NAND string. Along each bank of NAND strings, a source line such as source line 34 is couple to the source terminals 54 of each NAND string. Also the control gates along a row of memory cells in a bank of NAND strings are connected to a word line such as word line 42. The control gates along a row of select transistors in a bank of NAND strings are connected to a select line such as select line 44. An entire row of memory cells in a bank of NAND strings can be addressed by appropriate voltages on the word lines and select lines of the bank of NAND strings. When a memory transistor within a NAND string is being read, the remaining memory transistors in the string are turned on hard via their associated word lines so that the current flowing through the string is essentially dependent upon the level of charge stored in the cell being read.

Sensing Circuits and Techniques

FIG. 6 illustrates the Read/Write Circuits 270A and 270B, shown in FIG. 1, containing a bank of p sense modules across an array of memory cells. The entire bank of p sense modules 480 operating in parallel allows a block (or page) of p cells 10 along a row to be read or programmed in parallel. Essentially, sense module I will sense a current I₁ in cell 1, sense module 2 will sense a current I₂ in cell 2, sense module p will sense a current I_(p) in cell p, etc. The total cell current i_(TOT) for the page flowing out of the source line 34 into an aggregate node CLSRC and from there to ground will be a summation of all the currents in the p cells. In conventional memory architecture, a row of memory cells with a common word line forms two or more pages, where the memory cells in a page are read and programmed in parallel. In the case of a row with two pages, one page is accessed by even bit lines and the other page is accessed by odd bit lines. A page of sensing circuits is coupled to either the even bit lines or to the odd bit lines at any one time. In that case, page multiplexers 250A and 250B are provided to multiplex the read/write circuits 270A and 270B respectively to the individual pages.

In currently produced chips based on 56 nm technology p>64000 and in the 43 nm 32 Gbit×4 chip p>150000. In the preferred embodiment, the block is a run of the entire row of cells. This is the so-called “all bit-line” architecture in which the page is constituted from a row of contiguous memory cells coupled respectively to contiguous bit lines. In another embodiment, the block is a subset of cells in the row. For example, the subset of cells could be one half of the entire row or one quarter of the entire row. The subset of cells could be a run of contiguous cells or one every other cell, or one every predetermined number of cells. Each sense module is coupled to a memory cell via a bit line and includes a sense amplifier for sensing the conduction current of a memory cell. In general, if the Read/Write Circuits are distributed on opposite sides of the memory array the bank of p sense modules will be distributed between the two sets of Read/Write Circuits 270A and 270B.

FIG. 7 illustrates schematically a preferred organization of the sense modules shown in FIG. 6. The read/write circuits 270A and 270B containing p sense modules are grouped into a bank of read/write stacks 400.

FIG. 8 illustrates in more detail the read/write stacks shown in FIG. 7. Each read/write stack 400 operates on a group of k bit lines in parallel. If a page has p=r*k bit lines, there will be r read/write stacks, 400-1, . . . , 400-r. Essentially, the architecture is such that each stack of k sense modules is serviced by a common processor 500 in order to save space. The common processor 500 computes updated data to be stored in the latches located at the sense modules 480 and at the data latches 430 based on the current values in those latches and on controls from the state machine 112. Detailed description of the common processor has been disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication Number: US-2006-0140007-A1 on Jun. 29, 2006, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.

The entire bank of partitioned read/write stacks 400 operating in parallel allows a block (or page) of p cells along a row to be read or programmed in parallel. Thus, there will be p read/write modules for the entire row of cells. As each stack is serving k memory cells, the total number of read/write stacks in the bank is therefore given by r=p/k. For example, if r is the number of stacks in the bank, then p=r*k. One example memory array may have p=150000, k=8, and therefore r=18750.

Each read/write stack, such as 400-1, essentially contains a stack of sense modules 480-1 to 480-k servicing a segment of k memory cells in parallel. The page controller 410 provides control and timing signals to the read/write circuit 370 via lines 411. The page controller is itself dependent on the memory controller 310 via lines 311. Communication among each read/write stack 400 is effected by an interconnecting stack bus 431 and controlled by the page controller 410. Control lines 411 provide control and clock signals from the page controller 410 to the components of the read/write stacks 400-1.

In the preferred arrangement, the stack bus is partitioned into a SABus 422 for communication between the common processor 500 and the stack of sense modules 480, and a DBus 423 for communication between the processor and the stack of data latches 430.

The stack of data latches 430 comprises of data latches 430-1 to 430-k, one for each memory cell associated with the stack The I/O module 440 enables the data latches to exchange data with the external via an I/O bus 231.

The common processor also includes an output 507 for output of a status signal indicating a status of the memory operation, such as an error condition. The status signal is used to drive the gate of an n-transistor 550 that is tied to a FLAG BUS 509 in a Wired-Or configuration. The FLAG BUS is preferably precharged by the controller 310 and will be pulled down when a status signal is asserted by any of the read/write stacks.

Examples of Multi-State Memory Partitioning

A nonvolatile memory in which the memory cells each stores multiple bits of data has already been described in connection with FIG. 3. A particular example is a memory formed from an array of field-effect transistors, each having a charge storage layer between its channel region and its control gate. The charge storage layer or unit can store a range of charges, giving rise to a range of threshold voltages for each field-effect transistor. The range of possible threshold voltages spans a threshold window. When the threshold window is partitioned into multiple sub-ranges or zones of threshold voltages, each resolvable zone is used to represent a different memory states for a memory cell. The multiple memory states can be coded by one or more binary bits. For example, a memory cell partitioned into four zones can support four states which can be coded as 2-bit data. Similarly, a memory cell partitioned into eight zones can support eight memory states which can be coded as 3-bit data, etc.

FIGS. 9(0)-9(2) illustrate an example of programming a population of 4-state memory cells. FIG. 9(0) illustrates the population of memory cells programmable into four distinct distributions of threshold voltages respectively representing memory states “0”, “1”, “2” and “3”. FIG. 9(1) illustrates the initial distribution of “erased” threshold voltages for an erased memory. FIG. 9(2) illustrates an example of the memory after many of the memory cells have been programmed. Essentially, a cell initially has an “erased” threshold voltage and programming will move it to a higher value into one of the three zones demarcated by V₁, V₂ and V₃. In this way, each memory cell can be programmed to one of the three programmed state “1”, “2” and “3” or remain un-programmed in the “erased” state. As the memory gets more programming, the initial distribution of the “erased” state as shown in FIG. 9(1) will become narrower and the erased state is represented by the “0” state.

A 2-bit code having a lower bit and an upper bit can be used to represent each of the four memory states. For example, the “0”, “1”, “2” and “3” states are respectively represented by “11”, “01”, “00” and “10”. The 2-bit data may be read from the memory by sensing in “full-sequence” mode where the two bits are sensed together by sensing relative to the read demarcation threshold values V₁, V₂ and V₃ in three sub-passes respectively.

FIGS. 10(0)-10(2) illustrate an example of programming a population of 8-state memory cells. FIG. 10(0) illustrates the population of memory cells programmable into eight distinct distributions of threshold voltages respectively representing memory states “0”-“7”. FIG. 10(1) illustrates the initial distribution of “erased” threshold voltages for an erased memory. FIG. 10(2) illustrates an example of the memory after many of the memory cells have been programmed. Essentially, a cell initially has an “erased” threshold voltage and programming will move it to a higher value into one of the three zones demarcated by V₁-V₇. In this way, each memory cell can be programmed to one of the seven programmed state “1”-“7” or remain un-programmed in the “erased” state. As the memory gets more programming, the initial distribution of the “erased” state as shown in FIG. 10(1) will become narrower and the erased state is represented by the “0” state.

A 3-bit code having a lower bit and an upper bit can be used to represent each of the four memory states. For example, the “0”, “1”, “2”, “3”, “4”, “5”, “6” and “7” states are respectively represented by “111”, “011”, “001”, “101”, “100”, “000”, “010” and “110”. The 3-bit data may be read from the memory by sensing in “full-sequence” mode where the three bits are sensed together by sensing relative to the read demarcation threshold values V₁,-V₇ in seven sub-passes respectively.

Page or Word-Line Programming and Verify

One method of programming a page is full-sequence programming. All cells of the page are initially in an erased state. Thus, all cells of the page are programmed in parallel from the erased state towards their target states. Those memory cells with “1” state as a target state will be prohibited from further programming once their have been programmed to the “1” state while other memory cells with target states “2” or higher will be subject to further programming. Eventually, the memory cells with “2” as a target state will also be locked out from further programming. Similarly, with progressive programming pulses the cells with target states “3” “7” are reached and locked out.

Since a verifying take place after a programming pulse and each verifying may be relative to a number of verify levels, various “smart” verifying schemes have been implemented to reduce the total number of verifying operations. For example, since the pulse by pulse programming increasing programs the population of cells towards higher and higher threshold levels, verifying relative to a higher verify level needs not start until a certain pulse. An example of a programming technique with smart verify is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,243,275, “SMART VERIFY FOR MULTI-STATE MEMORIES” by Gongwer et al., issued 10 Jul. 2007, and assigned to the same assignee as the present application. The entire disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 7,243,275 is incorporated herein by reference.

FIG. 11 illustrates a conventional technique for programming a 4-state memory cell to a target memory state. Programming circuits generally apply a series of programming pulses to a selected word line. In this way, a page of memory cells whose control gates are coupled to the word line can be programmed together. The programming pulse train used may have increasing period or amplitude in order to counteract the accumulating electrons programmed into the charge storage unit of the memory cell. A programming voltage V_(PGM) is applied to the word line of a page under programming. The programming voltage V_(PGM) is a series of programming voltage pulses in the form of a staircase waveform starting from an initial voltage level, V_(PGM0). Each cell of the page under programming is subject to this series of programming voltage pulses, with an attempt at each pulse to add incremental charges to the charge storage element of the cell. In between programming pulses, the cell is read back to determine its threshold voltage. The read back process may involve one or more sensing operation. Programming stops for the cell when its threshold voltage has been verified to fall within the threshold voltage zone corresponding to the target state. Whenever a memory cell of the page has been programmed to its target state, it is program-inhibited while the other cells continue to be subject to programming until all cells of the page have been program-verified.

Defective Word-Lines

The next sections will consider techniques for the identification of defective word-lines. As discussed in the Background, word-line defects can include both leaky word-lines and broken word-lines. Both of these are consider below, with word-line leakage discussed first.

Word-Line Leakage Detection

Under prior art arrangements, the detection of word-line leakage can typically only be done at test time for the memory chip by applying high voltage levels directly to a device's pins and then measuring the current/voltage levels at the pins. This requires the use of tester device and cannot be done after the memory chip is assembled as part of a device. This means that the word-lines cannot then be checked after device burn-in. The techniques presented here allow for an on-chip means of detecting word-line leakage.

As will be discussed in the following paragraphs, the techniques presented allow for the detection of leakage on a word-line while the word-line has a high voltage applied internally. In an exemplary embodiment, a capacitive voltage divider is used to translate the high voltage drop to low voltage drop that can be compared with a reference voltage to determine the voltage drop due to leakage. The next section will present a related on-chip self calibration method that can help assure the accuracy of this technique for detecting leakage limit. For both of these processes, the can be under the control of the devices state machine, belonging to a built-in self test to save on the expensive of an external test device. In this way, the leakage determination can be done in an on-chip, automatic process that does not need complicated test equipment and can be performed in the field after chip is packaged.

First, some discussion of the problem involved here is probably useful. There is an ongoing effect to reduce memory devices to ever smaller scales. As the technology scales down to 20 nm and 10 nm memory cells, for example, the distance between the word-lines are consequently 20 nm or 10 nm. Tolerances become more critical and the device is more prone to defects that can cause word-lines leak to the substrate or short to adjacent word lines. It has been found that leakage correlates with dies that fail cycling due to grown defects and that detectable leakage seems to precede actual program status failure.

Previous methods for detection of word-line leakage would force a high voltage on the word-line and measure current leakage from a test pin pad. (Some examples of prior leakage detection is discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,428,621.) Since the leakage test requires a very accurate current source, this test mode can only be done by a conventional tester. As manufactures would like to migrate most of the test operations onto an inexpensive tester, a new test flow would be useful to be able to implement on-chip means of detecting word-line leakage. This section presents a way to enable the word-line leakage test automatically and internal to flash memory, and in a way that can be done with various voltage biases and multiple stress topologies. The method can also be done in the field after chip being packaged and further allow to system detect different leakage levels.

For a typical device, the word-line leakage could be on the order 100 nA at high voltage stress such as 10 to 20 Volts. The difficulty of detecting such a small current at high voltage is due to the current NAND architecture. This can be illustrated with FIG. 12. The planes of a memory circuit can have on the order of several thousand blocks, one of which is shown at 610 and each block may have several dozen word-lines, three of which are explicitly shown as WLn−1 615, WLn 613, and WLn+1 611. The high voltage is normally applied on the selected word-line, such as WLn 613 during program and read operations. The NAND architecture also requires to have the least area penalty of the wordline voltage drivers. The driver is typically connected to the wordlines from one end of the wordline array. If the architecture allow the connection to wordlines from both ends, wordline leakage or breakage can be detected by sending a known current from one end and detect the same current from the other end.

The high voltage VPGM is generated by a pump (discussed below with respect to FIG. 13) and supplied to the first decoding CGN block 601, represented here as a switch. CGN block 601 is a block to supplied the various (typically 3 to 5 different kinds) of voltages according to the mode of operations for each global control gate (CG) lines. Three of the CG lines (621, 623, 625) are shown explicitly, corresponding the shown word-lines. The CG lines (as many as the number of word-lines in each block) will rout to the row (block) decoder of the memory array. As indicated by the ellipses, the CG lines run to the other blocks of the array in addition to the only shown block of 610, so that these CG lines usually route with the top metal layer and run through all the row decoders of all planes. In one preferred embodiment, each block is decoded with a local pump. When the block is selected, a logic signal will enable the local pump to apply a high passing voltage transferG on the gates of the passing transistors (here represented by 631, 633, and 635 for the three shown word-lines) in the row decoder. The high voltage on the correspond global. CG will be transferred to the word-line of the selected block. Here, only the word-line WLn 613 is shown connected to receive VPGM, with the two adjoining word-lines (611, 615) taken to ground (or more generally the low voltage level), corresponding to the word-line to word-line leakage test pattern discussed below.

During the word-line leakage test, the word-lines can have different bias topology according to the defects to be detected. In the case of detecting word-line to substrate short, all the word-lines can be biased to high voltage of same levels, with the substrate at ground. In the case of detecting word-line to neighbor word-line shorts, the word-lines in the block will be biased alternatively at high voltage (VPGM) and 0 volts, as shown in FIG. 12. The worst parasitic capacitance will be from the latter case.

FIG. 12 also shows some exemplary, estimated values for the parasitic capacitances involved. From the high voltage pump to the CGN (high voltage to multiplexing block) in a 64 word-line architecture the contribution is roughly 5 pF. Inside the CGN block, the loading will be 4 pF. Each global top metal routing from CGN block to the row decoder at the edge of the memory array is 4 pF. The junction capacitance of one plane is 1 pF. Each local word-line has 2 pF.

In the alternative bias configuration, with a total of 64 wordlines, of which 32 wordlines are biased to a high voltage while the other 32 wordlines are biased to 0V, such as shown in FIG. 12, the total word-line capacitance is 2×32=64 pF. The total global CG line will be 5×32=160 pF. To detect the leakage on the high voltage supply node VPGM, then the total capacitance will be 64+160+4+5=233 pF.

Were the system to use 100 nA of leakage to discharge the large capacitance of 233 pF and let the high voltage to drop 1 volt, this will need a wait of 2.3 ms. After detecting the leakage on even word-line, the odd word-line will be tested with another 2.3 ms. The total leakage test time is around 5 ms.

To reduce the detection time, the voltage drop required for the detection can be reduced to 100 mV, with the corresponding detection time reduced to around 500 us. This can be used for in-field detection operations. In one preferred set of embodiments, this could be executed before each erase operation. For example, the detection can either be included as part of the erase operation sequence or can be done before the erase in response to an instruction issued by the controller. \If a block fails, the controller can then remove it from the pool of usable blocks.

The discharge and testing time will depend on the parasitic capacitance of the CG routing. Because of this, one set of preferred embodiments has an on-chip calibration mechanism built in to memory chip so that the precise leakage criteria can be used for detection and the test time can be automatically adjusted according to the chip architecture, word-line voltage stress topology, number of planes, and any other contributing factors. This calibration system is discussed further in the next section.

A normal high voltage pump is normally regulated by a resistor divider, such as shown in FIG. 13. The high voltage VPGM will be divided by the resistors 645 and 647, connected to ground (or more generally the low voltage level) through the switch SW1 649, and the compare point voltage for the amp 643 will be voltage reference vref of usually around 1.2 volts. The resistor chain normally will have a leakage current of 10 uA level. The differential amplifier or comparator 643 will be used to output a digital voltage flag-pump which will be used to control the pump clock. When the pump is pumped to the target level, the flag_pump will be low to turn off the pump clock. When the high voltage is dropped below certain level, the flag_pump signal will go high to enable the pump clock and turn on the pump to supply high voltage.

More detail on charge pumps can be found, for example, in “Charge Pump Circuit Design” by Pan and Samaddar, McGraw-Hill, 2006, or “Charge Pumps: An Overview”, Pylarinos and Rogers, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto, available on the webpage “www.eecg.toronto.edu/˜kphang/ece1371/chargepumps.pdf”. Further information on various other charge pump aspects and designs can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,436,587; 6,370,075; 6,556,465; 6,760,262; 6,922,096; 7,030,683; 7,554,311; 7,368,979; and 7,135,910; US Patent Publication numbers 2009-0153230-A1; 2009-0153232-A1; and 2009-0058506-A1; and applications Nos. 11/295,906 filed on Dec. 6, 2005; 11/303,387 filed on Dec. 16, 2005; 11/845,939, filed Aug. 28, 2007; 12/144,808 filed on Jun. 24, 2008; 12/135,948 filed Jun. 9, 2008; 12/146,243 filed Jun. 25, 2008; 12/337,050 filed Dec. 17, 2008; 12/506,998 filed on Jul. 21, 2009; 12/570,646 filed on Sep. 30, 2009; and 12/640,820 filed on Dec. 17, 2009. In particular, U.S. Pat. No. 7,554,311 describes a regulation scheme that also employs capacitances in a voltage divider for regulation.

A detection principle similar to FIG. 12 can be used to detect the voltage change on the large parasitic high voltage node. Since the leakage is in the order of 100 nA, a new way to divide the high voltage to low voltage has to be used. A comparator is normally built with a low voltage supply for saving Ice current. A capacitive divider has the advantage of no leakage current.

The difficulty with a capacitive voltage divider is that the initial voltage at the detecting point has to be accurately set. As shown in FIG. 14, a new set of differential amplifiers or comparators 653 is added for the word-line leakage detection on top of that of regulator 643. The comparison voltage verf1 can be set by a digital to analog converter voltage circuit 651, whose input can be set according to the device. (In an alternate embodiment, this could also be set as part of the calibration process.) A switch transistor SW2 659 will be used to initialize the compare nodes at the same voltage level of the regulating level. The capacitors C1 655 and C2 657 are the capacitive voltage divider. A ratio is 1:1 can be used. The detection point voltage Vmid will have a delta of

${\Delta \; {Vmid}} = {\Delta \; {V_{output}\left( \frac{C_{1}}{C_{1} + C_{2}} \right)}}$

where ΔV_(output) is the high voltage drop due to leakage.

To be able to detect the high voltage change of 100 mV, if the C1=C2, then a 50 mV change will be shown at the comparator point. The reference voltage for the comparator will be moved down by 50 mV. If the comparator also has accuracy problems, then the minimum detectable voltage drop will be limited by the comparator. The on-chip calibration can also correct some of the offset and error of the comparator.

The word-line leakage detection is a 3 step detection process, as shown in FIG. 15 where the level on the word-line is shown at 705. In a precharge phase, the word-lines are precharged to the high voltage level where the pump is on with regulator setting to targeted level SW1=vdd. Enough time should be used to charge the whole word-line. The far side of word-line which located far from the word-line driver side may take a longer time to charge (as shown as the dotted line 707). The high voltage can also pumped in two stages: first pumped to a intermediate voltage with another stronger pump, then use the high voltage pump to charge the word-line to a higher level. During the precharge time, the detection point Vmid is also initialized by turning on SW2.

After the word-line is fully charged to the target level, the pump will be turned off (float), along with the resistor regulator (SW1=0). The SW2 is also turned off, trapping a voltage on the mid node.

After some discharge time (a timer can be set with a parameter), the voltage drop will be measured by the comparator 653. The discharge time will depend on the total parasitic capacitance and the targeted detecting leakage current. (For more accurate leakage detection, a self calibration circuits will be introduced in the next section.) The mid point voltage will be compared with the vref1 to generate the signal Pass or Fail (PIF). The vref1 voltage is generated from an analog voltage generator 651 which can deliver a voltage between 0 to 1.2 V with 50 mV resolution, as an example.

When word-line leakage is detected, the whole block will typically be marked as s bad block which will not be used. Any valid data could be transferred as needed to another block, although, as noted above, in a preferred set of embodiments the leakage detection process is executed as part of an erase process. In other cases, for example when the memory has a NOR architecture, single defective word-line could be mapped out.

On Chip Self Calibration for Detection Time

The word-line leakage detection time depends on the parasitic capacitance, which can have large variations depending on architecture, voltage bias topology, and the number of planes. It is, consequently, preferable to have a method to calibrate the discharge time with a known leakage current. An on-chip self calibration algorithm is described in this section. A convenient way of accomplishing this, without needing to add extra elements, is to utilize a known current in the regulator to calibrate the detection time.

FIG. 16 shows the same elements as in FIG. 14, but as shown in FIG. 16, the resistor voltage divider is used to discharge the high voltage during the calibration process, as shown by the current path Idis 673. These elements are again preferably implemented as peripheral circuitry on the memory chip and the path tested in the calibration process should match the path actually used for detection of leakage. During on-chip self calibration, a good block should be used to determine the characteristics of a block without any word-line leakage. The good block may be determined by its program characteristics or from other some other good block check. For example, data corresponding to the highest state can be programmed and read back to see if it is correct. When the calibration is done on a fresh die, wordline leakage will often not have begun to manifest itself and the location of a good block is generally easy. The calibration is similar with the real leakage test and can be performed in 3 stages, as shown in FIG. 17.

A first phase precharges the word-lines of the test block to the targeted voltage level pattern by turning on the high voltage pump, the CGN voltage selection circuits and the row decoder for selected block. The high voltage is regulated by the resistor voltage divider and the comparator to enable pump clock. In this step, SW1 and SW2 are both on, as shown respectively at 801 and 803. The word-lines charge up as shown at 805 and 807, respectively corresponding to 705 and 707 of FIG. 15.

The discharge phase will be different from the normal word-line leakage test illustrated in FIG. 15. During the discharge phase, the resistor voltage divider will be kept on with SW1=Vdd. But the pump is disabled and left floating and SW2=0 to isolate the mid node from the resistor divider. The high voltage VPGM will be discharged through the resistor chain with a fixed leakage current along the path 673 of a discharge current of I_(dis) on the order of 10 μA.

When the output P/F 809 of Diff Amp 653 flips after comparing with a selected vref1 value, the amp output Pass/Fail will feed back to turn off SW1. A timer can start counting the time from the start of the discharge phase till the comparator flipping of P/F from pass to fail.

Based on detecting leakage-detection criteria and the ratio of this to the resistor leakage, the timer can be multiplied by a factor of 2 (such as 128) to set the timer counter for detecting targeted leakage current. For example, if the resistor leak 10 μA, the timer multiplying 128 will give the detecting current of 78 nA. (Other factors could also be used, but factors of two are readily implemented, as an easy way to multiply by 2 is to perform a shift of binary digits to the higher bits.)

The calibration only needs to be done once for a given voltage topology during die sort test. The timer digits can then be fixed and stored, for example, in a ROM fuse block. During power on read, the timer digits will be read out to registers and controls the word-line leakage test. For a different stress topology, a new calibration is needed, since the parasitic capacitance is changed. After each calibration, a corresponding timer parameter can be acquired and saved in the ROM flash memory.

The word-line leakage can be used during manufacture test, or for in-field tests once the device is out of factory. The micro-controller would issue the command to do the word-line leakage test in the user application. A convenient time to do the leakage test is before the erase operation, since the program disturb incurred during the leakage test can be eliminated by the subsequent erase operation.

More detail on the diction of detecting word-line leakage, including further embodiments, can be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/833,146 filed on Jul. 9, 2010 and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/016,712 filed on Jan. 28, 2011.

Detection of Broken Word-Lines

This section looks at the detection of broken word-lines. As device size decreases, in addition to the likely increase in leaky word-lines, the occurrence of broken word-lines is also likely to become more common. A broken word-line will have a high resistive connection across the break, because of which the cells on far end of the word-line (on the other side of the break from the word-line driver) will see a voltage drop during both program and verify operations. This will lead to programming pulses having a lower amplitude, so that cells will be programmed less; but as the verify level is also lowered, these under-programmed cells may still verify. As a result, the threshold voltage distribution for the broken word-line will show two humps, one corresponding to cells one side of the break and the other corresponding to cells on the other side of the break. The method described in this section can be used to identify the broken word-line failure and recover the data of the broken word-line.

There are various ways by which the broken word-line failure could be detected. One approach is to use a smart verify scheme, such as is described in US patent publications numbers US-2010-0091573-A1 and US-2010-0091568-A1. In this arrangement, the program voltage level is recorded when a certain number of bits pass the lower page program operation on each word-line. This recorded program voltage level is then used as a starting program voltage for the upper page of the same word-line. With this scheme, the number of program loops for each word-line is largely uniform, hence any variation in the total program loop number may be used as an indication of a broken word-line. However, as the program loop number in a broken word-line may not be significantly higher than typical, using the total program loop count to judge this failure could result in false alarms.

Another approach to detect this sort of failure is the “forbidden zone” read, where a read is performed to determine whether any cells have a threshold voltages in the region between the ranges allotted to data states. (See, for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,012,835; 7,616,484; or 7,716,538.) In this kind of scheme, after the program operation completes, a particular state can be sensed at two different levels and the results of the two sensing operations can be compared with each other. A scan operation can then be done to check then number of bits between the gaps of two reads which were sensed as non-conducting in one sensing operation, but conducting in the other sensing operation. This solution comes with performance penalty as every single program operation would be followed by two read operations and a scan operation.

Yet another method of identifying broken word-lines is to screen out the failure during die-sort. In this method, a whole block is programmed and then read back. (For example, when data is stored in a multi-page format, the lower page of each word-line can be programmed and read twice.) One read is done with a normal read point and another with a raised read point, similar to a forbidden zone read described in the last paragraph. The results of the two sensing operations are then compared using a test-mode command sequence. However, this will only pick up the word-line breakage that manifests itself at test time, when the symptoms often do not show up until the device has operated over some time. Also, when the word-line already exhibits breakage, it may not demonstrate this on every program cycle and, consequently, may be missed in a single test operation.

Considering the problem further, the symptom of broken word-line failure is a distribution with two humps. FIG. 18 shows the threshold distribution of a block of a memory word-line by word-line, for the a 64 word-line example. The distributions for three states are shown at 901, 903, and 905. As shown, these form three well defined and separated humps, where the highest two states, for example, are separated by the region between 923 and 925. For a broken word-line, however, those cells on the far side of the break from the word-line driver will be shifter to lower threshold values, as shown at 911, 913, and 915.

The reason behind a double hump distribution is that the part of word-line at far end of the word-line driver will show voltage drop. As a result, the cells that are located at the far end of the word-line will program slower and pass verify at a lower voltage. Since the failure will not cause a program status failure, it may not be detectable for a typical program failure mechanism. Programming a broken word-line will show some program loop variation, but word-line-word-line and block-block variation make it difficult to judge the failure based on the program loop count, as can be illustrated with respect to FIG. 19. FIG. 19 shows the number of pulse-verify iterations, or loop count, for each word-line to program, in this example, lower page into a 64 word-line block. As shown there, the loop count fluctuates over the different word-lines by several counts. These variations can reflect fluctuations due to the design particulars, such as whether it is an edge wordline or a central wordline, or how many erase-program cycle the wordline has experienced, as well as process variations. In the case of WL50, the loop count is noticeable higher than the other fluctuations, indicating what may likely be a broken wordline, although further tests would be used to confirm whether it is actually broken or this is just a false alarm.

The techniques presented here make it possible to detect broken word-line failure by comparing the program loop count for the cells located on two different sides of the fault. The cells along word-line are programmed and it determined how it takes the cells of different groups or subsets of these cells to verify as programmed to target state, such as writing all the cells to have a programmed lower page. A group with cells on the far side of a break from the word-line driver will take longer to program than a group that has all of its cells between the driven and the break. As memory cells are typically programmed using an alternating pulse-verify algorithm, this can be done by keep track of the number of pulses, or loop count, needed by the different groups or just the difference in the number required. The programming can be done for all of the cells along word-line or some portion of them, such as for system that program the odd bit lines and even bit lines separately. In the exemplary embodiments, the subsets of cells that have their loop counts compared are the contiguous subset of cells of the segment of one end of the word-line and the segment at the other end of the word-line. More generally other subsets of the cells could be used, but by looking at segments from the two ends of the word-line any break should be caught without having to do multiple comparisons of groups' loop counts; and looking at segments of the word-line is generally more readily implementable in the exemplary architecture than if the groups are formed from non-contiguous subsets of the cells, overlapping subsets, or some combination of these. To be able to compare the loop counts meaningfully for the different segments, their cell should be programmed with the random data, for example, in a multi-page format, The loop count comparison between two end of the wordline will eliminate the wordline to wordline or block to block variations. The cells on the same word line will follow similar programming characteristics.

Memory devices often already include a scan to check for failed memory bits when programming. The exemplary embodiment incorporates the broken word-line detection into such a routine, which can have several advantages. One is that such scans may already keep track of the loop count for the memory cells or segments as part of their algorithms. Also, as allows the broken word-line check to be performed many times after the device has been in operation, it can pick up breakages that only manifest themselves after device test or that are not detectable at every test.

In an exemplary algorithm, the broken word-line detection is incorporated into a failed bit detection that is done during the last few program loops and which counts the failed bits segment by segment, the word-lines being subdivided into multiple segments. In the exemplary memory embodiment presented above, each the segments can be taken to correspond to one or several adjacent ones of the read/write stacks as shown in FIG. 7. While this scan is ongoing, the scan result of first physical segment and last physical segment on the ends of the world-line can be monitored. When the failed bit count for either one of these two segments end goes below a fixed (in this example) criterion, a signal is latched high to mark the passing of the one segment.

An up-counter can then be triggered when the first of these segments passes the scan. The counter is then stopped when the slower of the two segments passes scan operation. At the end of program routine, the output of the up-counter is compared to the fixed criterion. If the count is higher than the criterion, a signal can be latched high to indicate that a broken word-line has been detected. The up-counter can be implemented on the state machine (112 FIG. 8). As the up-counter can simply count the program look stating when the one segment passes the its write criteria, the on-chip state machine will typically be able to keep count of the program loops, so this adds an additional count for it to maintain.

If a broken word-line is detected, its program status should be set to fail and the corresponding cached data should be terminated. The controller can then toggle out the next page of data that if it has been already loaded in the data latches. The next page data can also be programmed to a different location instead of toggling the data out to controller. The data of the failed data page and any corresponding lower pages can then be recovered by issuing a command sequence that will trigger read operation with shifted read voltage levels. (Aspects of data recovery and corresponding latch structures are described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,345,928.)

The process can be illustrated by the diagram of FIG. 20 that shows the waveforms for some of the signals involved in this scheme. In this diagram, OPC is the program loop count, corresponding the iteration in the pulse-verify sequence. OPC_DIFF is the up-counter for counting the program loop difference. SEG1_COMP is the latched signal to indicate the passing point of first of segments. LASTSEG_COM is the latched signal to indicate the passing point of the last segment. FIG. 20 picks up the program process after n−1 loops have been completed at time t₀.

Initially, SEG1_COMP, LASTSEG_COM, and the BROKEN_WL signals are all low and the up-counter is initialized to 0. At t₁, corresponding loop count n, a first one of the end segments (here taken as the first segment) reaches its passing point and SEG1_COMP goes high and the up-counter starts, as shown as OPC_DIFF. OPC_DIFF continues to increment up with the loop count until the other of the end segments (here the last segment) passes at t₄, corresponding to loop count n+3. The signal BROKEN_WL then goes high when OPC_DIFF>F_OPC_DIFF.

One complexity that can involved in implementing the above described scheme is the case when the architecture use two sided word-line drivers, placing drivers on both sides of the array (such as would be in the row decoders 230A and 230B of FIG. 1). This can be illustrated by FIGS. 21A and 21B. In FIG. 21A the word-line WL 901A has the driver 905A to the left, closest to the driver. The last segment along the word-line 901A is on the other side of the break 903A from the driver 905A and will consequently see lowered voltage levels and be slower than the first segment. In FIG. 21B the word-line driver 905B is to the right and closest to the last segment close to the last segment along word-line 901B. In this case, the first segment will be on the far side of the break 903B, receive lowered voltages and the first segment will be slower than the last segment. Under such an arrangement, it cannot be assumed that the last segment will pass last, since it may be closest to the driver.

The incorporation of broken word-line detection into a failed bit scan routine is considered further for the case where the memory array includes a number of redundant columns (for use replacement of defective columns), which are placed to the left side of the array so that they all are found in the last segment. (Such an arrangement is described in more detail U.S. Pat. No. 7,170,802, for example.) One way of implementing a failed bit scan for such a circuit is to scan the segments in the following order: Nth segment (last segment)−1^(st) segment−2nd segment . . . (N−1)st segment. The Nth segment is checked first since this will give an indication of the number of available spare columns to which data from defective columns in other segments can be remapped. In a normal segmented bitsean, such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,440,319 and which can serve as a basic embodiment upon which this discussion can build, if one segment failed the criteria, the rest of the segment will not be scanned to save time. If segment N fails, the circuit does not proceed to scan the first segment. The process then moves through the other segments, where the criteria for these other segments will preferable consider not only the number of failed bits in this segment but also the number of failed bits in the last segment counting the failures of the replacement columns. In an exemplary embodiment, in case of two sided word-line drivers, the scan circuit should be modified such that it continues to scan the first segment even if the last segment fails. This is shown in FIG. 22. Under this exemplary embodiment, the segmented bitscan is include as part of a normal program algorithm. The broken wordline detection scheme can be integrated into a similar state machine to that for, segmented bitscan without the detection. In this arrangement, when the last segment fails, the segmented bitscan is not terminated because the first segment should also be checked to see at which program loop it passed the program. Under the arrangement of U.S. Pat. No. 7,440,319, if any segment does not finish programming, it is counted as the whole page of data not being finished, and terminates as soon as one segment fails. Similarly, when the broken word line detection is incorporated, the exemplary embodiment will go through the last segment and continue to the first segment regardless of whether the last segment fails or passes.

In addition to the changes just described with respect to FIG. 22, the failed bit scan routine is also modified to include the broken word-line detection process. As noted above, the exemplary embodiment includes redundant columns, so the number of failed bits allowable in the other sections depends not just on the number of failures there, but also on the number of redundant bits available in the last segment that could be substituted in for failed bits in the first segment. For example, the failed bit count of last segment and first segment are added together and then compared to the criterion in order to determine pass/fail status for first segment. In the exemplary embodiment that incorporates broken word-line detection, the flow will be modified such that the failed bit count for failed segment can be compared to the failed bit criterion in order to determine pass/fail for first segment. FIGS. 23A and 23B show the comparison between a counting scheme that includes neither broken word-line detection nor the process of FIG. 22 (FIG. 23A) and the exemplary embodiment that includes both (FIG. 23B).

The first of these is schematically illustrated in FIG. 23A, which starts at 1001 with a scan of the last segment, including the redundant columns (ColRD), which is then compared against its criteria at 1003 to determine if the last segment has failed. In this embodiment, the process continues (pass or fail) on to the first segment scan at 1005. The criteria used at 1007 for the first segment is compared not just to the scan result for the first segment itself, but also takes into account the number of redundant columns (ColRD) available. If the 1st segment test at 1007 is passed, the flow similarly continues on to the second segment at 1009 and 1011, and so on through the other segments.

In order for the scheme to work correctly in case of two sided word-line drivers, the scan circuit will need to be modified such that it continues to scan the first segment even if the last segment fails. The diagram of FIG. 23B shows a scan algorithm to account for this and that includes the broken word-line check. As before, the scan of the last segment 1051 is compared against the corresponding criteria at 1053. In this embodiment, the process will again continue on the scan of the first segment, 1055, regardless of whether or nor the last segments passes or fails, going from 1053 to 1055 if 1053 fails. If 1053 passes, the flow will now go to 1059 as well as 1055. It should be noted that a broken wordline does not necessarily fail to program When the segment is far from the wordline driver, it will be slower to program, by not necessarily impossible. Hence, it may eventually pass, but it is needed to determine the programming speed at both ends of the wordline, which may differ significantly, in order confirm that a wordine is actually broken.

When the last segment passes, it will, trigger the OPC_DIFF block, as will the first segment from 1057, with the first of these to pass starting the counting and the last to pass stopping it in order to count the difference. At 1057 it is judged whether the first segment itself, without the inclusion of redundant columns. passes or fails. As noted, the determination of wordline breakage at 1059 will be based difference from the first segment (alone, without redundant column considerations) and last segment loop counts. 1061 is the bitscan for program status as before, where columns of the first segment may have defective columns replaced by redundant columns (from the last segment). Because of this, both 1057 and 1061 are included in the flow. The process then continues on to the second segment at 1063, 1065 and other segments as before.

By introducing this scheme, the number of defective devices due to broken word-line failures can be reduced without performance penalty. Further, as this is included as part of the programming routine, it is able to pick up breaks that only manifest themselves after a device is shipped. This allows it to be a more efficient and accurate method of broken word-line detection compared to the other methods due to the fact that it is in-field detection. It can reduce the program loop count variation due to word-line-word-line, block-block and chip-chip variations with no performance penalty and avoids time-consuming die-sort screens.

Detection of Broken Word-Lines: Word-Line to Word-Line Comparisons of Program Loop Count

This section presents an alternate, complimentary set of embodiment for detecting broken word-lines. The previous section, that is discussed further in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/833,167 filed on Jul. 9, 2010, compared the program loop count (PLC) on one end of a word-line to the count on the other end of the same word-line to determine whether the word-line may be broken, in an “intra-word-line” type of comparison. This section considers an “inter-word-line” comparison where the program loop counts of different word-lines are compared in order to determine whether a word-line may be defective. For example, the number of programming pulses needed for the cells along a word-line WLn is compared to the number needed for a preceding word-line, such as WLn or WL(n−1), to see whether it exceeds this earlier value by a threshold value. If the word-line requires an excessive number of pulses, relative the earlier word-line, to complete programming, it is treated as defective. It should be noted that techniques of this section and those of the last (intra-word-line comparisons) are independent and can used alone or in conjunction.

Returning back to FIG. 19 to consider the problem further, this shows the word-line to word-line variation in the number of program-verify cycles, or program loop count, needed for the cells along the word-lines to verify at their corresponding target data values. As shown there, the loop count for most of the word-lines can fall within a range of a few counts, except the one line that differs significantly and is, consequently, likely to be defective. The purpose in this section is to again catch uncorrectable ECC errors caused by different physical defects resulting from broken word-lines, leading to a higher loop count for such defective word-lines during write operations, particularly in the more sensitive multi-state program operations.

In addition the techniques presented in the previous sections, there are several approaches to deal with this issue. One approach is to screen for high loop count word-lines during memory test; however, this typically results in greater test program time and also results in overkill and resultant yield loss. Additionally, this will not pick up on grown defects that arise after the device has been in operation for some time. Another approach is use the sort of post-write read, such as presented in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/607,522 filed on Oct. 28, 2009, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/642,728 filed on. Dec. 18, 2009, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/874,064 filed on Sep. 1, 2010; however, this is typically only applied after all pages of data are written and would not pick up such defects earlier in the writing of a block. Additional techniques that can help to identify possibly defective word-lines is compare the loop count of the word-lines to a fixed maximum values or with an average loop count for a memory block, such as is describe US patent publication number 2011/0063918; however, in some cases these may not be optimal, as can be referring again to FIG. 19.

The loop counts in FIG. 19 show a periodic variation, where the even and odd word-lines difference exhibiting a regular difference of about two. Such variations can be artifacts of various aspects of a particulars devices design or process variations, where some devices may be relatively flat across the blocks and others exhibiting other regularities. Also, it is not uncommon for the first or last few word-lines of a block to differ by a few counts. It should be noted that these variations in and of themselves do not indicate a broken word-line, but just the standard variations of a given device. And although the count number in FIG. 19 is largely flat across the block, over which the even-odd word-line variation fluctuates, there may be a slope to loop counts due to process variations. In any of these cases, using the same threshold value to determine a broken word-lines for all word-lines of a block could led to over identification for those word-lines that tend to have a high loop count even when not defective and, conversely, to under identifications for word-line that tend to have low programming loop counts. When an average for the block as a whole is used, this would also mean the all of the loop counts from an early write would need to be saved and various computations on these performed.

The techniques of this section use a direct word-line to word-line program loop count comparison using the values for the write operation currently being executed. For example, as one word-line is being written, its final program loop count (PLC) once all of the cells on the word-line verify is kept and then, when the next word-line verifies, its program loop count is compared to the earlier value. If the count for the second word-line exceeds that of the first by settable threshold value, the second word-line can be marked as defective and the block can be mapped out or other action taken. The comparison could be between adjacent word-lines (WLn to WL(n−1)) for devices that, when not defective, show relatively little program count variation across the block, or for devices that show a fairly regular variation, a comparison based on this variation: for example, referring back to FIG. 19, for a device with sort of behavior, odd word-lines can be compared to the preceding odd word-line and even ones compared to the preceding even word-line (WLn to WL(n−2)). In either case, only one or a few loop counts need to be kept at any time (in a register on the controller or state machine, for example), the comparison is straight forward, and the result quickly obtained to be able take corrective action.

An exemplary embodiment is here taken as a memory where data is written in a 3-bit per cell format that is programmed in a lower, middle, upper page format. (For more detail on various multi-state write operations and page arrangements, see the discussion above or U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/642,649, filed on Dec. 18, 2009.) In certain classes of operation, some failures are caused by broken word-lines and the fail will often show up on the middle age of data as an uncorrectable error correction code result. The system can to detect these types of errors if it checks the program loop count during the programming of the word-line (at the fine programming stage, for instance) and compare it to a previous word-lines program loop count. This is most readily done for the immediately preceding word-line, but, as noted above, for some device types it may be more accurate to compare, say, odd word-lines to odd and even to even. If the difference in these value (delta) exceeds the threshold value specified in a file or register value for this purpose, the system can treat that block as a grown defect, with a resultant program failure.

Once a word-line is determined to be broken, it can be treated in various ways. For example, the defective word-line could be skipped and programming could continue on the next word-line; however, it is more common to treat the whole block as defective, with its status marked as such by the memory management system. With respect to any data already written in to the block, this can be treated in various ways. Rather than leave this data in the defective block, in most systems it is often preferable to transfer this data to a new block and subsequently pick up the write operation at the corresponding word-line where the defect was found. In memory systems that employ a non-volatile memory section from which data is ten folded into a multi-state format (such described in US patent publications US-2010-0309719, US-2010-0309720-A1, US-2010-0174845-A1, US-2010-0172179-A1, US-2010-0172180-A1, US-2010-0174846-A1, and US-2010-0174847-A1 and U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 12/642,584, 12/642,740, 12/642,611, and 12/642,649 all filed on Dec. 18, 2009), the data is still retained in the binary source block, so that the folding operation can just be restarted in the next available free block rather than having to read out the previously written data from the defective blocks. In some systems, there be circumstances where there may not be a sufficient time allowance to take care of the previously written data at the time that the broken word-line is initially detected, in which case it will can be moved or rewritten as a background or garbage collection operations, as this would allow the rest of the block to be continued to be written in without significant delay, but in another block.

One of the biggest risk factor in multi-state devices as scales continue to shrink it the high error rate, for which this sort of program loop check process can provide a safety margin. The tradeoff for this operation is mostly just a fairly modest amount of firmware overhead. And although this discussion is given primarily in terms of multi-state devices, it should be appreciated that it will readily apply to binary devices, and the binary sections of devices using both binary and multi-state sections (as in a binary cache arrangement); as well.

Some of the system requirements and a basic algorithms are now considered for an exemplary embodiment based on the sort of system in US patent publications US-2010-0309719, US-2010-0309720-A1, US-2010-0174845-A1, US-2010-0172179-A1, US-2010-0172180-A1, US-2010-0174846-A1, and US-2010-0174847-A1, and U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 12/642,584, 12/642,740, 12/642,611, and 12/642,649 all filed on Dec. 18, 2009, where the non-volatile memory includes both binary and multi-state (MLC) section, with the data being initially written into the binary part and then folded into the MLC portion. In this embodiment, the command for a program loop count check can be issued before the folding of a binary data into an MLC block; for example, a flag can be set in an appropriate file for the controller (or state machine) and if this flag is enabled, the program loop count check will be carried out. In this embodiment, the program loop count is checked for a word-line after finishing the fine stage of programming of that word-line and after otherwise checking its status.

After the end of fine stage (or, more generally, other write operation where the loop count is to be checked) for each word-line, after waiting for ready and checking program status, the loop count data for the word-line is read. This number is then compared to the appropriate previous loop count data (such as the immediately preceding word-line or, as discussed above, a comparison of odd with odd and even with even). If the comparison value is more than the specified threshold value, the block is marked as a grown defect block and the appropriate entry made in the systems data management structure, such as a grown defect file. Any needed counters for the write operation are then updated and the source data from the binary block is then folded in the next available MLC block as selected from a free block list, for example.

In many devices, an exception to this process should be made for the first one or two and last one or two wordlines of a block, as they are more susceptible to device variations. (See FIG. 19 for an example of this, where the first and last few word-lines do not exhibit the sort of regular even-odd pattern shown for other, non-defective word-lines.) These variations can result in the loop count for these word-lines being unusual, even when non-defective.

In cases where the system is executing parallel folding (folding simultaneously to multi-die), at the fine step the system firmware issues a die select before checking status. The system preferably issues the read loop count command just after checking the status for each die and compare it to the previous loop count from the same die. In case of a fail, this can be treated like a program failure and can use the same handling.

In any of these arrangements, if the loop count difference between the word-line being checked and its comparison is more than that specified in the value in the specified file, the system treat that block as a grown defect block and will then fold the data from source binary block to the next available MLC block. If the loop count is not more than this specified value, the system continues normal operation and the folding into the current. MLC block. The threshold value for a given device can be determined at development time for the device, where a number of devices of the same type can be evaluated to see how much variation is to be expected among non-defective program loop counts, how big a difference is likely when a word-line is broken, and, based on these, what is a reasonable threshold value for examples of this device. This evaluation can also be used to determine any sort of standard pattern across the array and whether the comparisons by made between adjoining word-lines, every other word-line (i.e., odd-odd and even-even comparisons), or other pattern; it can also be used to determine how much variation there is for the loop counts in the first and last few word-lines and which should not be included in the program loop count check. The determined threshold value can then be loaded into the appropriate file for use once the device is shipped. The parameters for this particular file could then be a flag set to enable/disable the program loop count check and also the threshold value, or program loop delta, against which the count differences are checked. The system firmwear will also need to account for which word-lines at the beginning and end of the block will be excepted and the amount of register slots to set aside; for example, if odd-odd/even-even comparisons are made, the count for the previous two word-lines needs to be maintained. In the exemplary embodiment, the threshold values is a fixed value, but in other cases this could be used as an initial value which then be updated dynamically based on, say, the number of program/erase cycles (“hot count”) or error results.

A host can send a suspension or stop transmission command when the system is doing a program loop count check. The firmware needs to remember the value of the program loop count of the last word-line being checked and be able to resume when appropriate. In case of a safe power cycle while the device is in middle of folding, once the system restores power the program loop count check command sequence would be issues and it is a taken that the first word-line will then not have any data to which it can be compared and will be treated like the first word-line of the block (WL0). In case of a write abort being detected, the data is re-folded as it is so that the system would start the program loop count check at the start of the fold.

The memory system will typically maintain various status indicators. This could include an error log where, in case of a program loop count check error, this error can be logged as a program failure and have the same operation code as program fail in the error log. The system can also include a grown defect file. Such a file can log program fails (Program Status Fail) and erase fails (Erase Status Fails), with each entry as one bit for each fail differentiating between the two. By increasing this to two bits, this can now also include program loop count fail, such as illustrated in Table 1.

TABLE 1 Value Fail 00 Program Status Fail 01 Program Loop Count Fail 10 Erase Status Fail 11 No Fail

FIG. 24 is a flowchart illustrating some aspects of the program loop count check for a basic embodiment. In FIG. 24, the flow picks up a write process where the PLC check is invoked. The process begins at the point 1101 in the write operation where a page of data is being written into word-line n (WLn). This could be the first page of a set of data or the first word-line of the block where it is used: as noted above, the first (and last) few word-lines may be excepted from the check, so that the process shown man not start with n=0, but rather at n=1 or n=2, for example. The discussion here has largely assumed an all bit line (or ABL) type of architecture, where the whole word-line is written at once, but others arrangements, such as an odd bit-lines/even bit-lines arrangement where only a sub-set of the memory cells along a word-line are written at the same time may be used. Also, only the writes for which the count is being checked, such as the middle page example discussed above, are shown. Once the write is complete, the corresponding program loop count for WLn of PLCn is recorded at 1103.

As this first word-line is not going to be checked as part of this flow, it will either need to be assumed as not broken or otherwise checked. This could be done by one of the prior art methods, such as a maximum absolute (as opposed to relative) PLC or the complementary intra-word-line method described above in the preceding section. (If the last one or several word-lines of a block are also exempted, similar comments apply.)

At 1105, the word-line is then incremented (n→n+1) and the next word-line is programmed (1107) and its program loop count is recorded (1109). The program loop counts between the current word-line and the previous word-line are then compared at 1111. If this difference exceeds the threshold value (“Yes”), the word-line is taken as broken and corrective actions can be taken (1115) as discussed above, after which the write operation continues on as appropriate. If the difference is within the acceptable bound (“No”), it is then determined (1113) whether there are more word-lines in the block to check. This could be based on whether there are more pages in the data set or reaching the end (possible less a few word-lines, as discussed above) of the current block. If there are more word-lines (“No”), the flow loops back to block 1105 and the process is repeated for the next word-line. If, instead, this were the last word-line to be checked (“Yes” from 1113), the flow then moves on to the next block, next programming phase, or other appropriate operation. In this example, each word-line's program loop count is compared to the preceding, adjacent word-line, if the comparisons are instead the sort of even-even, odd-odd comparison discussed above, the flow would be modified accordingly, with other appropriate modifications for other variation patterns.

CONCLUSION

Although the various aspects of the present invention have been described with respect to certain embodiments, it is understood that the invention is entitled to protection within the full scope of the appended claims. 

1. A method of operating a non-volatile memory circuit having an array including a plurality of erase blocks each including a plurality of memory cells formed along word-lines, comprising: determining whether a word-line is defective by a process including: performing first write operation on a first plurality of memory cells along a first word-line from a first erase block, the first write operation including a series of alternating programming pulses and verify operations, the first plurality of memory cells along the first word-line individually locking out from further programming pulses as verified; determining the number of programming pulses in the first write operation for the memory cells of the first plurality of memory cells along the first word-line to verify as written; subsequently performing a second write operation on a first plurality of memory cells along a second word-line from the first erase block, the second write operation including a series of alternating programming pulses and verify operations, the first plurality of memory cells along the second word-line individually locking out from further programming pulses as verified; determining the number of programming pulses in the second write operation for the memory cells of the first plurality of memory cells along the second word-line to verify as written; determining whether the number of programming pulses in the second write operation relative to the number of programming pulses in the first write operation exceeds a threshold value; and in response to the number of programming pulses in the second write operation relative to the number of programming pulses in the first write operation exceeding the threshold, determining that the second word-line is defective.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising: subsequently setting a status indicator in a data management structure for the memory circuit to indicate that the first erase block is defective.
 3. The method of claim 1, further comprising: subsequently transferring the data written in the first write operation and any data previously written into the first erase block to another erase block.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the non-volatile memory circuit is part of a memory system including a controller circuit connected thereto and wherein the determining whether the number of programming pulses in the second write operation relative to the number of programming pulses in the first write operation exceeds a threshold value and the determining that the second word-line is defective are performed by logic circuitry on the controller circuit.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the non-volatile memory circuit includes a state machine and wherein the determining whether the number of programming pulses in the second write operation relative to the number of programming pulses in the first write operation exceeds a threshold value and the determining that the second word-line is defective are performed by logic circuitry on the state machine.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein the threshold is a settable parameter
 7. The method of claim 1, further comprising: prior to determining whether the number of programming pulses in the second write operation relative to the number of programming pulses in the first write operation exceeds a threshold value, deter mining that the first word-line is not defective.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the second word-line is a word-line adjacent to the first word-line.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein there is an intervening word-line between the second word-line and the first word-line.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein the first plurality of memory cells along first word-line are all of the cells connected along the first world-line and the first plurality of memory cells along second word-line are all of the cells connected along the second world-line.
 11. The method of claim 1, wherein said determining process is performed for all word-lines of the first block except for the initial one or more adjacent word-lines and for the final one or more adjacent word-lines. 